Oh man two updates in one day. I just got back from the Dinan dealer. My car is in limp mode, 5 minutes of battery terminals together doesn't help, and the Dinan dealer and Dinan tried to say my ECU was garbage. Funny, because it went into their shop with nary an error code nor warning light and worked flawlessly both on the 250-miles I drove yesterday and on the way down to the shop.

I'm not sure if it messed with the AA tune or not. My gut instinct is no since my AFRs in limp mode were similar to before, but I emailed Viral to ask his opinion just to cover all my bases.

ETA: the level of amateur hour at that shop was astounding. The level of amateur hour on the part of Dinan was also astounding. The fix took less than 15 minutes.

-Go to bmwfans and look at ZUSB of latest trans control unit for my production date
-Clear all adaptations in INPA
-Enter that ZUSB in winkfp
-Enter my vin
-Hit the 'Program' button. Wait.
-Remove key
-Start car

They spent 3.5 hours and tried to get me to pay them for diagnostics and tried to tell me that my ECU was bad, then got snippy and basically said that AA software was responsible and that I have no idea how an E46 works nor how to flash control units and that I wasn't listening to them.

Suck it.

By the way, anyone in the Salt Lake County area, avoid Independent Import at all costs. They were nice enough to refund me (only with Dinan's approval, even though they proved incapable of flashing an EGS with a simple, prepackaged tune) but seriously, I cannot recommend a shop that has no idea what they're doing. Dinan retailer means nothing. I asked AA some noob questions and they (Andrew, Viral, and Nick, and Craig sent me the pdf for pre-install browsing) were very helpful. The folks at Independent Import were kind and helpful until I asked them to do it again, at which point they chose to creatively interpret what I said, talk me down, insinuate that I knew nothing about E46s, and tried to say my ECU was bad. I mean come-on. Amateur. Hour.

If you think I'm just being a mega-douche about this chew on this fact. They tried to clear the adaptations while the engine was running.